"I felt a creative spirit the first time I walked in this house," says Rina Welles of the 1921 Santa Monica house that was once home to renowned German playwright Bertolt Brecht. "I liked the energy. " The foursquare house was where Brecht penned "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" and other plays during the 1940s. Today the house is one component in a multigenerational family compound for Welles, husband David Golubchik, her mother, Joanna, and their children, Leah, 10, and Alek, 6. The home, which has been renovated and complemented by a new addition by Dub Studios , also stands as a success story for preserving cultural landmarks in fresh and inviting ways.

Al Roker went sans underpants in George W. Bush's White House - but it wasn't because he was feeling sexy on the job. Rather, the "Today" show weatherman had accidentally pooped his pants on his way in. He'd included the anecdote in his new book, "Never Goin' Back," released a week ago, and discussed it in an interview with Nancy Snyderman on Sunday's "Dateline. " By Tuesday, however, after the tale of his tail took on a life of its own, he found himself on "Today" discussing it again.

Everybody loves lists. Most of those you see in the papers or online tend toward the inconsequential (The Six Best "Fast & Furious" Movies). So here's a list with a bit more gravitas: The five biggest lies you're being told about entitlement programs. Never mind that the very word "entitlement" is a lie. Social Security and Medicare got that name because workers became "entitled" to those benefits by paying into the system. In recent years, however, the term has become distorted to signify benefits people are entitled to without earning them.

Jimmy Fallon may have been joking about the royal baby on Monday, but Tuesday found him paying attention to a much more important child: his own! The "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" host, 38, and producer wife Nancy Juvonen, 46, welcomed a baby girl at 6:21 a.m., the comedian's rep told People . The couple met on the rom-com "Fever Pitch," costarring Fallon and Drew Barrymore, whose production company is co-run by Juvonen, the mag said. They married in 2007. It's a first marriage and first child for both.

Bonnie Franklin, star of TV's "One Day at a Time," died Friday at her home in Los Angeles, suffering complications from the pancreatic cancer she had revealed in September. The actress was 69. Later Friday, her sitcom daughters shared their thoughts online. Valerie Bertinelli, who played the younger of divorced mom Ann Romano's kids on the long-running show, said simply on Twitter, "My heart is breaking. " She included a snapshot of herself with Franklin. She continued on her website . "Bonnie has always been one of the most important women in my life and was a second mother to me," Bertinelli wrote.

For Craig Ruggless of Winnetka Farms, one of the most prized plants this season is spigariello, a leafy cool-season green that tastes like broccoli and keeps growing after you've harvested it. Spigariello resembles broccoli rabe (aka rapini) in appearance but has white flowers and a sweeter, slightly peppery taste. Ruggless is a third-generation Italian American, and Winnetka Farms , the half-acre homestead he and partner Gary Jackemuk have developed in the San Fernando Valley to promote homegrown cooking and backyard gardening as means to self sufficiency, could be straight out of Naples.

The biggest mistake people make when talking about the outsourcing of U.S. jobs by U.S. companies is to treat it as a moral issue. Sure, it's immoral to abandon your loyal American workers in search of cheap labor overseas. But the real problem with outsourcing, if you don't think it through, is that it can wreck your business and cost you a bundle. Case in point: Boeing Co. and its 787 Dreamliner. The next-generation airliner is billions of dollars over budget and about three years late; the first paying passengers won't be boarding until this fall, if then.

Whimsic Alley, the Miracle Mile shop that sells "Harry Potter" merchandise and was sued by Warner Bros. for trademark infringement, has reached a settlement with the studio that will allow the store to remain open, owner Stanley Goldin told The Times in an email. In March, Warner Bros., the distributor of the "Harry Potter" movies and since 1998 the owner of the bulk of the "Potter" trademarks, targeted the shop with a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that some fans feared would force the store to close.

Twenty-five years ago Friday, Steve Wilhite invented the GIF file format and bestowed upon the world the perfect vehicle for some of the best memes ever created. It's more than a picture but not quite a video, but so often, it's just perfect -- especially with the rise of Tumblr. But what Wilhite also did when he invented the format for CompuServe back in June 15, 1987, was begin one of the most hotly debated arguments of all (Internet) history: Is GIF pronounced like "gif" as in the first three letters of "gift" or "jif" as in the peanut butter . It's an argument that's raged across the Internet on forums , has Web pages dedicated to it and is even addressed by Wikipedia . So which is it?

For most garden plants, flowering is a sign of renewed life. That's not the case with the succulent blue agave ( Agave tequilana ). Like other agaves, tequilana flowers only at the end of the plant's life. A 15-foot asparagus-like stalk emerges from the center, sending out puffballs of flowers at the top. The mother plant then dies, but not before producing pups at its perimeter. Most blue agaves never get to that stage, however. The sugar-rich sap that develops prior to flowering can be fermented into the alcoholic drink called pulque; the heart, or pina, is used in the production of tequila.